Tag Archives: Mike Taylor

Bored spouses looking for an extra-marital affair are more likely to shun the bargain bin in favour of more upmarket supermarket brands, according to a new survey.

Although the poultry and vegetable displays may not be the most romantic setting, researchers have found that the weekly food shop is for some a prime opportunity to catch someone’s eye while checking out the “deal of the week” at the same time.

Dating website IllicitEncounters.com quizzed their 800,000 members to find out more about their shopping and cheating habits.

IllicitEncounters – an ‘extramarital dating’ website. It’s fair to say their users perhaps don’t reflect the habits of your average Waitrose shopper. What we’ve found, if we actually trust the results (and I wouldn’t, personally), is that users of an affairs website also shop at Waitrose.

What we haven’t found is that people who shop at Waitrose have affairs – and we especially haven’t found that shopping at Waitrose is a sign your spouse is having an affair. Which, universally, was the headline of the coverage.

How DO they find the time? Office staff working long hours are FIVE times more likely to have an affair

Working overtime is task most of us are forced to do, but staff who rack up the extra hours in the office are five times more likely to have an affair.

And while many people working more than 45 hours during the working week struggle to get any quality personal time at all, some flirty employees manage to find the time and energy to get frisky with their colleagues during long, lonely evenings in the office.

Ladies, don’t you hate it when your boyfriend refuses to part with that old jumper you hate, even after you ask him to? Never fear: all the other girls out there are taking matters into their own hands! Just ask the Daily Mail:

One in seven women admits binning their man’s old clothes without telling him (even though they have 16 items in the wardrobe they never wear)

Women typically harbour 16 items of clothing they never wear – yet throw out their partner’s clothes without telling them, according to research.

One in seven women (14 per cent) admits going behind her man’s back to clear out clothes she thinks do not suit him.

So, you see, it’s perfectly fine for you to find those clothes your boyfriend wants to keep and then to give them to a charity shop – we know it’s OK because all the other girlfriends out there are doing it, and we know all the other girlfriends out there are doing it because a charity shop (who wants more donations) says so:

The survey by the British Heart Foundation (BHF), which is encouraging people to take unwanted items into its shops, found that a third of Britons feel ‘relieved’ following a clear-out, while 11 per cent of women say it is ‘better than sex’.

You hear that, ladies? Getting rid of your unwanted clothes – or those of your loved ones – is BETTER THAN SEX, says the charity shop wanting your unwanted clothes. If that’s not enough to convince you… well, the BHF will just have to commission another bullshit poll, really.

A few days ago I highlighted a story, based on a press release from an ‘extra-marital dating website’, which took two Daily Mail journalists to write – even though 71% of the story was copied exactly from the original press release. You can catch up on the details here if you missed it.

It’s the first time I’ve seen this press release or article. No idea why my name is on it… I do interviews for YOU mag so maybe name left on a template from old feature put online? I am going to check.

This, then, asks an interesting question: did the Daily Mail really attribute a story to a journalist who had seen neither the press release nor the finished article? Simply by neglecting to delete her name from a submission template?

If so, we’re in the quite amusing position whereby the Daily Mail are so used to copy/pasting entire articles, they’ll even copy whatever name is on the submission form – and their fact-checking skills are so atrophied as to entirely miss the error.

There was bad news for footballers the world over recently, as a fourteen-paragraph news article written by two Daily Mail journalists ranked the sportsmen lowest in the ‘sexy profession’ charts:

Sorry Becks, women have rated the sexiest professions … and ‘vain and over-confident’ footballers come last

Previously it has been assumed that most women would jump at the opportunity to date David Beckham, but not if the latest research is anything to go by.

A new survey asked women what they thought the sexiest profession was for a partner and the top result has been revealed as a musician or artist, while footballers come last with just 1 per cent of voters finding the athletic profession sexy.

How much of the fourteen-paragraph news article came from the press release, and how much from the two professional journalists credited with writing it? Churnalism.com has the answers…

That’s just 29% of the news story coming from the professionals at the Daily Mail – or just less than 15% each. The rest was penned by IllicitEncounters’ PR guy Mike Taylor, who defended his work to me over Twitter:

“It’s not for me to decide what is actual news but as for the research I can assure you of it’s (sic) legitimacy”

This, I think, is where the world of Bad PR gets interesting. Let’s for a moment leave aside the belief that the research is legitimate (Mike may well believe it is, but very valid issues exist around cherry-picking, leading question wording, self-selected sample groups, poor polling methodology and – in the case of surveys via companies such as OnePoll – the incentivisation of participants to take part in surveys not designed for them, and to spend as little time as possible on their participation).

Instead, let’s take a look at where the responsibility lies here. Who is the bad guy? Is it Mike Taylor, creating opportunistic pseudo-articles (‘Isn’t it time we had a more progressive Pope?‘ asks find-and-fuck dating website) in order to get his client into the press? Isn’t that just Mike’s job, and as he rightly says there ought to be someone out there filtering out the nonsense created by people like him?

How about Bianca London and Andrea Childs – isn’t it their responsibility to write better stories, to ignore useless PR puff-pieces such as this nonsense from IllicitEncounters, to use their platform to find real stories and report what’s really important? Or is it that, as a primarily fashion journalist, Bianca is instead repeatedly tasked with producing inordinate levels of content for the largest and least discerning online publication in the world, including 13 articles between February 14-15 alone, and in August last year as many as 101 articles in a single month? How would even the best of journalists keep up standards under such conditions?

Perhaps it’s the fault of the newspaper – shouldn’t the Mail Online put a stop to the damaging ‘publish anything’ mentality which pressurises journalists into the open arms of PR types from seedy websites and lowers the standards of journalism across the board? Or is it that in a world of free online news and falling revenues, the anything-goes publishing mentality keeps the advertising revenue stream profitable and facilitates the little genuine journalism that remains, as the newspaper survives as a profit-making enterprise?

The real blame, unfortunately, has to lie a little with each of these, and yet ultimately with none of them. The news system is broken, and even as each cog in the machine quietly turns correctly in its own direction, the entire news machine drives further over the cliff.

It’s February 14th, and in accordance with tradition the nation will be heaving tonight with the sounds of relationships the country over being consumated. Specifically, the relationships between PR agencies and their satisfied clients, as retailers and businesses cash in on the Valentine’s Day media free-for-all.

While the exploitation of the most commercial of the Hallmark Holidays is nothing new, 2013 certainly hasn’t let the side down – the first rains of the Valentine’s PR monsoon falling as early as January, with pioneering research into the evolution of the pet name (Daily Mail, January 28th) published in the Daily Mail:

Move over darling! Old-fashioned favourite beaten into third place as babe and baby become Britain’s top terms of endearment

The research found that terms of affection such as ‘darling’ and ‘sweetheart’ have been superseded by more modern and streamline pet-names like ‘baby’ and ‘love’ (both of which were actually only invented in the year 2000 as part of Britain’s preparations for the Millennium Bug). These findings have far-reaching implications, according to the researchers – who coincidentally are a sex toy retailer named after two common pet names:

Lovehoney co-founder Neal Slateford said: ‘The ways pet names have changed over the years show we are getting even more affectionate towards each other and a little less formal.

‘As a nation, we are learning to lighten up when it comes to love and sex. That has to be a good thing.’

If I were an online sex toy retailer, I’m sure I’d find ample reason to agree. Still, that the survey produced media-friendly results of potential benefit to the company carrying out the research should in no way undermine the credibility of this online, self-reported and entirely-subjective poll, even as further findings from this PR exercise are explained:

And while the British might have a reputation for being unromantic, the poll found that the opposite is true, with 72 per cent saying that Valentine’s Day is a great excuse to show a partner how much they appreciate them.

Britain ‘too stuffy’ to host romantic visit as Italy and France is preferred by tourists

While we may be too stuffy to be romantic, we’re not too stupid to recognise reverse psychology. The lack of romance in modern-day Britain is clearly an area fraught with controversy, with a study published by Interflora insisting that Britons are a nation of romantics who fall in love at first sight (Daily Mail, February 6th), with one in five Brits positive the best way to declare new-found love is with a nice bunch of flowers. If only they could find a suitable florist.

While there’s clearly some rigorous academic dispute over the romance levels of the average Brit, at least one thing is certain – somewhere in Britain can be arbitrarily declared as more romantic than everywhere else. After all, in any closed set with random variance, there has to be an upper and lower limit – and what better way to highlight normal statistical distribution than by letting people know you sell perfume (Daily Mail, February 1st)?

When it comes to Valentine’s gifts, we’ve an abundance of research – each piece diligently compiled by online survey companies using questions written very carefully by PR companies on behalf of businesses aiming to use Valentine’s Day to secure column inches. Voucher website Groupon, for example, revealed flowers and chocolates just don’t cut it (The Sun, February 12th), and instead a gifts need to be memorable – rather like one of the experiences you can buy inexpensively on voucher websites like Groupon. And heaven help you if you get last-minute flowers from a petrol station – voucher website NetVoucherCodes.co.uk have research proving such an idea is a no-no (Daily Mail, February 11th).